But in the Gallic writers of our period the distinction between the first two stages is not at all clear. Ausonius, for example, who never directly mentions the elementary school, says that Macrinus was his first master, but he puts him under the heading ‘grammaticus’;[633] and in the Theodosian Code, while grammatici and rhetores are always distinguished in the laws of the emperors about teachers’ salaries and privileges, the elementary masters are never specially named. Probably the work of the primus magister was considerably diminished in the schools by the fact that many families employed private tutors for the initial stages of education; and whether a school had a separate master for the lower classes depended, no doubt, on its size and circumstances. The whole of ‘primary’ education was loosely considered the province of the grammaticus,[634] who in most cases would have an assistant, called by the less honourable name of litterator[635] or primus magister. The proscholus sive subdoctor, mentioned by Ausonius,[636] seems to have been an assistant grammarian, different from his chief only in social position. For the proscholus described seems to have been as much above the ordinary grammarian in learning as the grammarian was above the litterator. But his learning was in inverse ratio to his pay, for Ausonius describes him as ‘Exili nostrae fucatus honore cathedrae’.[637]
Of Minervius, Ausonius says that he supplied the forum with a thousand of his pupils, and added two thousand to the number of the senate,[638] and Jullian[639] doubles this number (three thousand) to get the total number which Minervius taught (for he was rhetor at Constantinople and Rome as well as at Bordeaux) and, dividing by thirty (the probable number of his teaching years), allots to him two hundred students per annum. But Ausonius’s style and character hardly admit of such mathematical speculation. He was much too vague and careless about things to make a calculation of this kind anything but extremely uncertain. The most we can say is that Bordeaux, the most flourishing Gallic university of the fourth century, must have had an exceptionally large number of students, several hundred, perhaps, drawn from all parts of Gaul, just as the professors sometimes came from Greece or Sicily.
Education was begun at an early age. Paulinus of Pella began when he was five,[640] and Ausonius took charge of children in their infancy.[641] At fourteen or fifteen the boy usually left the grammarian. Paulinus, who was probably retarded by the difficulty he found with Latin, was still in his grammarian’s school at fifteen.[642] If, as it appears, the law-course lasted five years, law students who went to Rome from Gaul would spend only a year or so in the school of the rhetor. For the emperor forbade students to continue their studies at Rome after the age of twenty, when they were removed by force if they omitted to return. ‘His sane qui sedulo operam professoribus navant, usque ad vicesimum aetatis suae annum Romae liceat commorari. Post id vero tempus qui neglexerit sponte remeare, sollicitudine praefecturae etiam invitus[643] ad patriam revertatur.’[644] Such was the stringent enactment of Valentinian in A.D. 370. We hear of students attached to the ‘Corpora’ who continued their studies at Rome after their twentieth year.[645] But it appears that the general age for leaving the rhetor’s school was, at any rate, before twenty.
says Ausonius to Exsuperius,[646] which means that fifteen was a common age for boys to be at the rhetor’s school.
About school-hours we know very little. It does not seem likely that the grammarian had so many hours per week for each of the seven liberal arts. What he aimed at was extensive reading, primarily for philological and literary knowledge, and only secondarily for such historical and scientific facts as came under Capella’s various heads. ‘The grammarian’, says Seneca, ‘attends to language, and, if he wishes to go farther afield, to history, while the utmost limit of his activities is poetry.’[647] ‘If he wishes to go farther afield’ is significant: the system was an elastic one.
Of the total number of teaching hours there is only one indication. Ausonius sends the teacher Ursulus six philippi, the usual New Year’s gift from the emperor which Ursulus had not received, and says that they are ‘As many as the men to whom the fates of the Romans and the Albans were entrusted, and as many as his teaching hours at school and the hours he sits at home’.[648]
Denk, therefore, seems to be wrong when he says of the teachers[649] that they had no limitations of subject or method or time.
When this schoolday of six hours started in Gaul we do not know; but it is probable that it began fairly early in the morning and went on into the early afternoon. This was the case at Antioch in the fourth century;[650] and Augustine says that the teacher is kept busy in the hours before noon.[651]
With regard to examinations we find nothing definite, but there is a passage in the famous law of 370[652] which points to the application of some test. The emperor wants a report from the prefect of Rome, with a view to imperial appointments, of all students who have completed their course and are going back to the provinces. Moreover, such reports (breves) must be lodged at the imperial office every year. ‘Similes autem breves etiam ad scrinia mansuetudinis nostrae annis singulis dirigantur, quo meritis singulorum institutionibusque conpertis, utrum quandoque nobis sint necessarii iudicemus.’
From a few scattered hints it looks as if there was some sort of academic dress. Domitius teaches Terence at Ameria, wrapped in a thick cloak (endromidatus) though the weather is warm[653]—a picture which reminds us of Augustine’s ‘paenulati magistri’.[654] At Antioch the rhetor wore a philosopher’s mantle[655] (tribon), a costume which was not unknown in Gaul, for Sidonius remarks that Claudianus, though a philosopher, wore ordinary dress.[656]
That there were holidays at regular intervals is clear from Ausonius’s letter to his grandson:
And Sidonius invites Domitius to come and share the joys of the country after his laborious teaching in the stuffy schoolroom.[658]
When exactly the vacations began and how long they lasted in Gaul we do not know, but it is probable that the order and duration of the Roman holidays were imitated. Ausonius’s verses in the ‘Thirty days hath September’ style on the Feriae Romanae[659] indicate that the Roman holidays existed at least in the memory of the schoolboy. Tertullian implies that they existed also in his experience, though less splendid in the provinces than at Rome (minore cura per provincias pro minoribus viribus administrantur).[660] We hear of ‘Florales Ludi’, which were different from the Roman Floralia, in connexion with the academy of Toulouse. There were ‘Agones rhetorici et poetici quotannis celebrari soliti, quique etiamnum hodie Kalendis Maii (sic) quotannis in domo publica committuntur’.[661] It is doubtful when these games were first introduced. Justinus mentions them in his description of the foundation of Massilia. Tradition at Toulouse said they were instituted by a maiden of literary tastes, Clementia Isaura; another version is that she merely renewed them. She is mentioned in the Agonisticon of one Petrus Faber of Toulouse in the sixteenth century, and Papyrius Massonius wrote an ‘Elogium Clementiae Isaurae’. They set up a statue to her on which the inscription ran: ‘Clementia Isaura ... forum frumentarium, vinarium, piscarium et olitorium ... Capitolinis populoque Tolosano legavit, hac lege ut quotannis ludos Florales in aedem publicam quam ipsa sua impensa extruxit celebrent....’
On such occasions a child would be taken by his parent to see the show, though he would not be allowed a seat (non sedens propter aetatem),[662] and at festivals such as those of St. Just he would enjoy a game of ball or dice.[663]
A calendar of about the middle of the fourth century would, Jullian[664] supposes, taking the evidence of Ausonius’s poem ‘de Feriis’, the calendar of Philocalus, and the Christian writers, show about eighty-nine holidays, of which he considers six doubtful. In the meantime Christian festivals were increasingly claiming recognition. Already in 321 we find Constantine prohibiting the exercise of certain trades on Sunday,[665] and in 389 the Biblical conception of Sunday is definitely recognized[666] (solis die quem dominicum rite dixere maiores) and a general cessation of business is enjoined. In the same year the pagan festivals were cut down; only the summer and autumn festivals (described, even in the law, with the usual literary diffuseness of the time), the New Year holidays, and the foundation-days of Rome and Constantinople were to remain.[667] On the other hand, shows on Sunday were forbidden, ‘so that the sacred rites enjoined by the Christian law should not be disturbed by any gathering of shows’[668] (A.D. 392), and at Easter the business of the forum and of the law courts[669] was suspended. In theory, therefore, there was a decrease in pagan and an increase in Christian holidays. In practice, however, pagan festivals long persisted,[670] and it is significant of the tenacity of paganism that the Lupercalia was celebrated in the fifth century. Very often the church kept the old festivals, merely changing their meaning.[671]
There can be no doubt that the pagan festivals were observed as school holidays: the references in Horace and his contemporaries and the Roman conception of festus, fastus, feriae, as indicating solemnity and reverence,[672] point to this conclusion. Such was evidently the case in the fourth-century Italian schools, for Augustine waits to resign his professorship until the holidays of the ‘Vindemia’.[673]
Of the Christian festivals it is harder to judge, especially after the revival of paganism under Julian at the beginning of our period. But it is probable that while the earlier laws (e.g. those of Constantine) had no widespread effect on the schools, the increasing emphasis laid on Christian festivals, passing through the fourth and fifth centuries into the Germanic period of Gaul, must have meant the recognition of Sundays and such festivals as Easter in the school curriculum.
Besides the public festivals there was the long vacation, lasting from the end of July till the beginning of October.[674] At Antioch, similarly, classes were taken only in the winter and in the spring,[675] the vacation lasting from midsummer till the beginning of winter. When the vacation came, the Antioch rhetors used to go in for public speeches and imperial panegyrics.[676]
Moreover, any special event produced a holiday. At Antioch any festive occasions, funerals,[677] or civil commotions,[678] served to close the schoolrooms. On the occasion of the marriage of Ricimer with the daughter of Anthemius, the schools of Gaul enjoyed a holiday.[679] Apparently the length of the holiday was not controlled by organized rules, and this time it lasted so long that even Sidonius protested.[680] ‘Tandem’, he says, ‘reditum est in publicam serietatem, quae rebus actitandis ianuam campumque patefecit.’
It is interesting to find signs of a common life among the students, the beginnings of a residential university. Aulus Gellius claims the authority of Pythagoras for this mode of life. ‘Here is another point we must not omit: all the students of Pythagoras, as soon as they had been admitted into that “corps” of his, pooled all their possessions, slaves, or money, and so a close and lasting society was formed.’[681] Suetonius tells of one C. Albucius Silus of Novaria (Cisalpine Gaul) who came to Rome and was received into the ‘contubernium’ of Plancus, the orator, i.e. lived under the same roof, became a ‘convictor’ with him.[682] ‘You can enjoy the possession of no good thing’, Seneca says, ‘without some one to share it.’ You will gain more by talking and living with (convictus) people than from set speeches. Cleanthes could never have interpreted the philosophy of Zeno if he had merely attended his lectures. But he lived with him, examined his private life, and watched him to see if he practised what he preached.[683] Similarly, Plato and Aristotle and the rest learned more from the conduct than the words of Socrates, and ‘Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were made great not by the school of Epicurus, but by living with him (contubernium).’ Gellius gives many examples of this sort of literary fellowship. While master and students dined together, one of the servitors would read some passage from a Greek or Latin author, and if a difficulty arose the master explained. So at the table of Favorinus ‘servus assistens mensae eius legere inceptabat....’ and a discussion was introduced by the philosopher on the word ‘parcus’.[684] Literary criticism was the favourite thing, as when the Bucolics of Vergil and Theocritus were read together at a dinner, and it was noticed that Vergil had left alone passages which contained the peculiar Greek sweetness but could not and should not be translated.[685]
We have no direct data for supposing that this system was followed in Gaul in our period; but the Favorinus mentioned in Gellius came from Arles, and there appear to have been ‘contubernia’ in Massilia.[686] Moreover, the ‘Platonic clubs’ of Sidonius and the general social temper of the Bordeaux professors make it likely that something of the kind was found at the Gallic universities.
As to the payment of teachers, it is clear that before Vespasian it was very unequal. Verrius Flaccus, who was tutor to the children of Augustus, received a salary of 100,000 sesterces (£1,000).[687] Even the infamous Palaemon, to whom parents were forbidden to send their children by Tiberius and Claudius, got as much as 40,000 sesterces. Martial takes a pessimistic view. In his advice to a friend on a career for his son he counsels: Let him avoid grammarians and rhetoricians if he wants to make money:
In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was the case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first century A.D. that he found State-appointed teachers there.[689] But there must have been great lack of organization and equality because State-payment meant, at that time, payment by the municipal town, which could not always provide proper security. Security, indeed, became more and more shaken, and the improvement made by Vespasian when he fixed the teachers’ salaries was a much-needed measure. In the famous decree of 376 Gratian and Valentinian ratified this enactment.[690] Rhetoricians are to receive twenty-four annonae[691] from the treasury, Greek and Latin grammarians, twelve. The chief cities of the provinces are encouraged to elect professors who are to be paid according to the standard fixed by the emperors. Trèves, the imperial favourite, gets something more (uberius aliquid), thirty annonae for a rhetor and twenty for a grammarian.
There can be no doubt that the emperors tried to monopolize education. Julian’s decree[692] that the appointment of all teachers was to be subject to the imperial approval, and the law of Theodosius and Valentinian in the next century forbidding all public schools outside the imperial academy, are illustrations of this tendency. Nevertheless, there must have been a large number of private-school teachers who were not paid by the State. The imperial legislation of the later empire could not have done away entirely with so established and widespread a class of men. They survived, especially in elementary education, and possibly their number exceeded that of the officially State-paid teachers.
The law makes it quite clear that the State-paid school and university teachers[693] were, at one time, dependent on their towns for pay; and the frequent mandates of the emperors to the municipalities not to neglect these salaries show that they were not always prompt in paying. Symmachus, also, complains of the withholding of salaries;[694] and it has been suggested in this connexion that the teachers were unpopular because they were mostly pagans. It is more likely that their unpopularity was due to the fact that their teaching did not touch the mass of the population, who nevertheless had to support them. That the municipal salary stopped when the imperial one came into existence seems unlikely. Denk thinks that the imperial-paid ‘auditoria’ were distinct from the lower municipal-paid schools,[695] but probably the individual cities went on contributing part of the professors’ salaries, even after the law of Gratian.[696] As to the amount received, the impression made by the upper circle of the Bordeaux professors is certainly one of material prosperity. Marcellus of Narbo,[697] Sedatus of Toulouse,[698] and Exsuperius[699] did very well for themselves, and Eumenius considers his salary of £5,000 as nothing extraordinary: ‘multo maiora et prius et postea praemia contulerunt’ (sc. principes).[700] Even of the grammarian Marcellus, Ausonius could say that riches came by teaching:
On the other hand the less distinguished seem to have had a disproportionately small salary. The frequent application of the epithet ‘sterilis’ or ‘exilis’ to the chair of the grammarian is a feature of Ausonius’s picture of them.
Besides the imperial and the municipal support there were the gifts from the emperor,[702] and the possibility of presents from the family of the pupils—a practice which is still very much in evidence in many country centres. Finally, there were the fees from the pupils, part of which seems to have been paid directly to the teacher.
The class fee (merces, minerval) seems to have been stipulated for by the rhetors individually. Axius asks Merula in Varro’s De Re Rustica,[703] ‘to be his master in the shepherd’s art’, and the reply is, imitating the practice of the rhetors, ‘Yes, as soon as you promise to pay my fee’ (minerval). Juvenal refers to the same practice:
Bulaeus says that the amount of the fee was sometimes left to the generosity of the parents.[705] He can hardly be referring to a common practice. The fourth century was far too business-like for this sort of thing. Most of the teachers who were in a position to do so probably demanded a large fee, like Exsuperius.[706] How far this bargaining went on after the law of Gratian we cannot tell: but the fact that it went on after Vespasian had fixed the salaries shows that it was not necessarily stopped in 376. Much more liberal was the East. Lectures at Antioch were open to all, even to pupils of other rhetors:[707] and sometimes invitations to attend were sent round by the servant of the lecturer.[708]
As to the number of the professors appointed little is known. Probably from what Ausonius says there were ten at Bordeaux, six ‘grammatici’ and four ‘rhetores’—the highest number, Jullian thinks, that Bordeaux ever reached. At Constantinople Theodosius appointed in 425 to his special auditorium[709] three rhetors and ten grammarians for Latin, five rhetors and ten grammarians for Greek, one professor of philosophy, and two for law. But this is Eastern exuberance. Trèves, the imperial favourite, had only two or three rhetoricians, one Latin grammarian, and one Greek grammarian—a post which could not always be filled.[710]
Denk, in remarking that the number of teachers was thus definitely fixed, adds that there is no trace of a principal who gave direction to the work of the students.[711] Now it is true that there was no definite organization, but it seems very probable that the emperors, when they interested themselves in a school and appointed teachers, would have some one at the head of the establishment to facilitate communication between the imperial offices and the school. Moreover, it is a natural and traditional thing the world over for a group of men more or less permanently banded together to have a chief. The Druids had their leader,[712] and among the Persian Magi there was an archimagus. Besides, we have at least one ‘trace’ which Denk does not notice. Eumenius, as head of the Maeniana, was called moderator, which looks like an official title. And in the Christian schools it was a common thing to have a head (primicerius), as will be shown later.
Jullian[713] notices as a praiseworthy feature of the fourth-century educational system that the master passed on with his pupils as they advanced from stage to stage. Our author reads into his idealized fourth century a method which has long been practised by the Jesuits. But perhaps the wish is father to the thought. For it is clear that this could not, in the majority of cases, apply to the elementary master, whose intellectual limitations would effectually prevent him from taking the higher classes. Ausonius tells us as much.[714] Such teachers were ‘humili loco ac merito’. He mentions Romulus and Corinthius[715] as the Greek grammarians who taught him ‘primis in annis’, and they do not appear again in the list of his masters. When quite young he was put under his uncle Arborius (qui me lactantem, puerum iuvenemque virumque | artibus ornasti),[716] who may have been a kind of general tutor to him at that time. When he was about ten years old he went to Toulouse (c. A.D. 320) and was taught for eight years in the school of Arborius, who in 328 was appointed tutor to one of the sons of Constantine at Constantinople,[717] where he died. Ausonius then returned to Bordeaux where he seems to have continued his studies in the rhetorical school, studying under Minervius,[718] and Luciolus,[719] who was once his fellow student, and probably under Alcimus[720] and Delphidius,[721] while Staphylius took the place of Arborius[722] as general tutor:
All these later masters, like Minervius, are spoken of distinctly as ‘rhetor’ or ‘orator’, just as his early masters are distinguished as ‘grammatici’.[723]
Ausonius’s experience as pupil, therefore, seems to contradict the statement that the master followed his students from class to class. But it may be argued that the scheme was upset in Ausonius’s case by his temporary removal to Toulouse, and his experience as master may be urged. This is a plausible contention. For he tells us in the Protrepticon of three stages in his career corresponding presumably to those of the litterator, the grammarian, and the rhetor. Yet Jullian’s supposition is not therefore true. Not every primary master was an Ausonius who could rise to the top of his profession and become an imperial tutor. Obviously there were a large number who found, as they left, the teaching profession a poor and dreary task. The grammarians whom Ausonius mentions,[724] except, perhaps, Nepotianus,[725] did not rise to the higher position, and some, in their old age, even lost the little glory they had achieved, as Anastasius did.[726] Moreover, Ausonius does not say that his promotion kept pace with the advance of his students. The terms he uses are quite vague (mox, idem). And even supposing the master could in this way remain with his pupils, what happened when they had reached the highest stage? Jullian maintains that he started at the bottom again with a new class: ‘Le même homme était tour à tour professeur de grammaire et rhéteur: il lui arrivait ainsi de suivre ses élèves, de les accompagner de classe en classe.’[727]
Now this is reducing the matter to an absurdity. The fixity of the distinction between grammarian and rhetor is so striking in all Latin literature, and particularly in Ausonius, that the system, however desirable, would have been impossible. It is quite clear that there was a definite status attached to the positions,[728] and the Theodosian Code prescribes different salaries. Is it conceivable (to mention no other objections) that a man would be constantly changing his social standing and his salary in order to accompany his class from stage to stage?
The most we can say is that the connexion between the lower and higher forms of education was sufficiently close (as in France to-day) to allow a man of merit to rise from the lowest to the highest. This is proved by Ausonius’s case, and Denk is not stating the whole truth when he says that the teachers were independent of one another.[729] There was a certain amount of independence, no doubt, between grammarian and grammarian, or rhetor and rhetor, but between the grammatical school and that of the rhetorician there was a considerable degree of interdependence.
Before we can understand the working of the school and see it in its proper perspective, before we can grasp the inner meaning of the system and appreciate its merits and demerits, something must be known about the society in which the school flourished and of the imperial organization which gave direction to that society. As Guizot said in his History of Civilization, study must proceed from without to within.[730]
It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of a subject so well worn, but a brief summary of such points as bear on education is necessary.
An outstanding feature in the development of the later empire is the growth of civil power. The great military commands, so common previously, become more and more impossible, owing to greater subdivision. The imperial army was divided into one hundred and twenty[731] parts, as against forty-five at the end of Trajan’s reign, and of these Gaul had fifteen. The civil power was so far recognized that military and civil offices were separated. The civil administrator of a province was called ‘proconsul’ or ‘consular’ (which did not necessarily mean ex-consul) according to whether the province was reckoned as ‘old’ or not. Above him were the four supreme civil authorities of the empire, the Praefectus Praetorio (who had become a civil magistrate after the Praetorian Cohorts had destroyed themselves by supporting Maxentius against Constantine), the Praefectus Galliarum, the Praefectus Italiae, and the Praefectus Illyrici et Orientis. It is well to bear in mind the status of these officials, for it will help us to understand the meaning of the fact that a schoolmaster like Ausonius became ‘praefectus Galliarum’. Each praefecture was divided into ‘dioceses’ and at the head of each was a ‘Vicarius’. The tenants of the higher offices were divided, according to the honour of their position, into ‘Illustres’, ‘Spectabiles’, and ‘Clarissimi’.
An important point in this system is that there was no continuous official chain passing down from the emperor to the lowest official; the emperor could interfere at any point (a particular in which the Pope resembles the Roman emperors) and every official was regarded as directly responsible to him, though he was controlled by his superior official as well. Functionaries were made to change places rapidly, so as to prevent a man from obtaining undue influence by long residence in one place. Thus, though the growth of civil power was favourable to the development of schools, the coercive spirit which is destructive of true education remained. On the one hand, education was encouraged by the various departments of the extensive[732] Civil Service—the secretariat (scrinium ab epistulis), the Record Office (a memoria), the office for legal documents (a libellis), and that for the emperor’s engagements and arrangements (scrinium dispositionum); and on the other hand, the controller of the civil service (magister officiorum) sent forth his secret service men (schola agentium in rebus), who, beginning their career by superintending the post service (curiosi), became a pregnant source of corruption and oppression. Extraordinarily efficient as the imperial civil service was, it had this important loophole of corruption, while oppression was possible everywhere.
The centre of the bureaucracy was the ‘Consistorium’ or Privy Council.[733] Certain high officials became ‘comites consistoriani’, and special people were called in for particular points. The position of the senate in this scheme of things is interesting from Ausonius’s statement that Minervius added to it two thousand members.[734] The number of members tended to grow enormously owing to the increasing use made by the emperor of his ‘ius adlectionis et loco movendi’, and the ‘ordo senatorius’ was still in existence. Ultimately, all who were ‘clarissimi’ belonged to the senate. But in practice only the higher officials, the priests, and the ‘consulares’ actually took part in the proceedings, which tended to become municipal rather than imperial. The position of the senate, therefore, regarded as an imperial body, was merely nominal, though it was of considerable local importance. Its chief function was to provide ‘panem et circenses’, paid for by the holders of the consulship, the praetorship, and the quaestorship, which alone survived from the old ‘cursus honorum’. At the head of the senate was the ‘praefectus urbi’, whose powers were wide and undefined. Rome’s loss of dignity, with the emperors frequently residing in Gaul and elsewhere, affected the prestige of the senate, which still met in the ‘eternal city’. Yet as the emperors became weaker we find the senate growing in importance, and during the last twenty-five years of the Western Empire its activity is remarkable.[735]
Society in Gaul during the fourth and fifth centuries may be divided into four classes:[736] (1) the senators, (2) the curiales, (3) the common people, and (4) the slaves.
The senators were exempt from municipal offices and from torture, and had a right to be tried in a special court. These privileges were hereditary, though subject to the emperor’s good pleasure, and were counterbalanced by the heavy taxes, especially the senatorial ‘aurum oblaticium’. Distinguished from this political aristocracy were the ‘curiales’ or ‘decuriones’, members of the ‘curia’ or municipal council of their town. Entry into the class was by nomination, and could not be refused by anybody who had the property qualification, and, once procured, it was hereditary. It was a most unpopular honour,[737] because it involved the collection of taxes, for which the ‘decurio’ was financially responsible. In practice it was often a ruinous position, since no effective jurisdiction was open to the collector. In the fourth century there were about one hundred decurions in each town. The plebs comprised petty landowners, tradesmen, and free artisans. Whereas under the republic slaves worked for the family, and trade was domestic, free men now worked for the State, and trade became public. Guilds had sprung up under the republic, but, whereas they were then free, the empire more and more destroyed their liberty. Augustus made them dependent on the will of the prince and the senate, and in our period we find them regarded as rendering compulsory services under the tutelage of the emperor. What is more, the Theodosian Code proves that they had become hereditary.[738]
Finally, the slaves may be classified as domestic and rural, the latter comprising many different grades, from serfs of the soil to comparatively free labourers.
In spite of this rigid suppression of spontaneity and freedom, which is seen also in Diocletian’s Edict fixing the prices throughout the empire, there is a gain in other directions. The ‘societates publicanorum’ ceased to exist, and the provincial was less exposed to capricious plunder, which in some cases, however, was removed only to admit organized robbery. Diocletian had levelled the inequality of taxation, but had not made an equal oppression impossible. Yet there was the boon of peace, and the genuine efforts to help provincials on the part of emperors like Julian. He greatly reduced the land tax[739] and administered justice in person, revising the decisions of judges, and summarily dismissing corrupt officials. The supply of slaves had palpably decreased, for wars of conquest had ceased, and the Germanic prisoners, having been found to be unmanageable, had been granted a certain amount of independence. We find that as much as two hundred ‘aurei’ was paid for a single slave; and if we are forced to conclude that the slave in question must have been of a very special kind, we must grant that even so the price had risen enormously. This meant that people had to fall back on their own resources more frequently: a local and provincial independence was fostered, and we have something more nearly approaching ‘natural economy’.
Such was the system of which the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed the failure. As time went on taxes continued to be oppressive,[740] the bankruptcy that inevitably resulted from keeping an army continuously on a war footing became more apparent, and the security afforded by the empire became less and less. A weak ruler in a despotic state makes room for all manner of corruption, and under the weak emperors of the later empire this result is evident from ‘the frequent creation of new offices whose object was to curb the corruption of the old’.[741] When the imperial defence at length breaks down before the repeated waves of barbarian invasion, we feel that the severance of Gaul from an imperial government so rigid and so inelastic has merely been forestalled: it would have come in any case.
The deadening effect of this system is evident. It left no room for life and growth; spontaneity and genius were stifled, and progress checked. Naturalness and truth were not at home in this age of officialdom and adulation. The Theodosian Code bears witness to the elaborate and involved etiquette which revelled in high-sounding names,—‘tua sublimitas, tua excelsitas, tua magnificentia, praecelsa sinceritas tua’,[742] &c.—to which even the emperors were bound by the enormous stress which public opinion laid on these distinctions. Not that this Byzantine etiquette was wholly evil. As a means of counteracting the confusion which had previously reigned, of creating a respect for the person of the emperor which meant better order and fewer rebellions, it was a master-stroke on the part of Diocletian. But its evil effects in the direction of artificiality in times when the emperors could, with less justice, be called ‘divine’ is not to be denied.
But by the side of this mechanical pagan society there was growing up at this time ‘another society, young, energetic, fruitful of results—the ecclesiastical society. It was around this society that the people rallied ... the senatorial and curial aristocracy was a mere phantom: the clergy became the real aristocracy.’[743]
In this society lay the hope of the future.
The cast-iron rigidity of class distinctions is apparent even from the slight foregoing sketch of social conditions. Yet it is worth while dwelling on it a little longer in view of the statements that have been made. Every man had his place allotted to him by the divine will of the emperor, and there he must remain on pain of committing sacrilege. Valentinianus (says the emperor in A.D. 384) has prescribed for every rank its proper place and worth. If, therefore, any one occupies a position not his own, let him not plead ignorance. He stands convicted of sacrilege, for he has neglected the divine commands of the emperor.[744] This was the general scheme of Roman society. Nor was it modified to any great extent in Gaul by the admixture of the Visigoths, who had much the same system.[745] How did its details affect education in Gaul? Jullian maintains that practically every free-born child regularly attended the schools, which were equally accessible, he thinks, to the children of freedmen.[746] He does not deny that distinctions were rigid and many: ‘le IVᵉ siècle est, comme le XIIIᵉ, un siècle de privilèges, de distinctions et de hiérarchie’: but he thinks that all the classes were equal in the matter of education and that rank disappeared in the school.[747] In a similar strain Denk argues that the curials must have had a considerable school training in order to fit them for the management of municipal affairs. ‘In order to perform such duties thoroughly they must have had the necessary knowledge: and this they must have obtained from the school.’[748]
As for the free artisans and the slaves, Denk cites the education of the old Roman slaves. Cato had demanded that household slaves should be able to read and write, and Mommsen says[749] that the lower classes had considerable knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Similarly, Lavisse says[750] that the uneducated, on the whole, could not have been too numerous, for even the humble sergeant had to be able to read the word of command on the tablets, and there were schools for the sons of veterans.
What authority Jullian has for saying that the distinction between classes broke down in the matter of education he does not say; and an examination of the Theodosian Code and of contemporary authorities makes it entirely improbable.
First of all, it was only the upper class that could compete for the higher grades of imperial office, which was regarded as the prize of education. The pride which Ausonius took in his imperial honours is only half concealed,[751] and he puts before his grandson the same goal of studies.[752]